Epidemiology

Lemierre’s syndrome appears to have been relatively common in the pre-antibiotic era.

Although it is now a rare disease with an incidence of approximately 1 per 1,000,000 persons per year, there seems to be a resurgence in the disorder.

One hypothesis to explain the resurgence is that primary care physicians are now heavily discouraged from prescribing antibiotics for sore throats, and that early infections which would previously have been aborted by antibiotics now progress to the full blown syndrome.